Mr. Hooligan Page 13

  She continued cooking, tipsy from the wine and all that loving, she said. She slid the onions, potatoes, and sweet peppers in with the chicken chunks coated in red and browning juicily. Next came a can of coconut milk, whitening the pot then picking up swirls of red curry as she stirred. Next, the bamboo shoots and a cup of frozen peas that he handed her, then he dipped across and sluiced cold wine from his mouth into hers, pressing his bare chest against her, and the room felt hot and smelled of figs and red Thai curry and his skin, that sharpness he had.

  They ate at the table, curry ladled over mounds of basmati rice, refilled wineglasses. Rain was falling outside. They ate messily, they didn’t care, commenting on the food. Playing footsie under the table.

  She jiggled her eyebrows at him. They had all night for things to progress. Let the anticipation be sweet.

  Somewhere between putting the plates in the sink and draining the bottle of Chardonnay into her glass, he lost his boxers, and she cackled and clapped her hands once when she noticed. Before you know it, her clothes were off, too, and she was leading him astray, into the bedroom. The rain had picked up, smothering the music, and rain-breeze washed over the bed. Giggling and kneeling over him, she flung the sheet over their heads, and they set about pleasing each other, while the rain drummed the tin roof.

  * * *

  The sheets were drenched. He was drowsing, pillows scattered on the floor. She kept the bathroom door open and spoke to him as she sat on the toilet peeing. “Are you listening to me?” He mumbled. She saw herself in the big mirror over the sink, hair mussed, face flushed, and she was happy.

  He said, “You musn’t tell your friends about me. They’ll all want a piece. I can’t be expected to rock every woman’s world, there’s only one of me.”

  She said in a monotone, “Okay, you stud you.”

  He said he liked some of those pictures she had on the wall, were those ones new? She said a few were. How could he see? Put on a lamp. Look at the ones by the closet, Lamanai, that one with the yellow rope leading up to the temple, the angle and the color contrast. He snapped on the light. He said man, how cool. She’d pumped up the color saturation on the computer to bring out the yellows, and the blues in the sky. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, smiling giddily at herself for some reason, maybe content mixed with chardonnay.

  He said, “Could you take a portrait of Duncan and one of Duncan and me? I’ll bring him over one day.”

  She said, teasing, “Sure, and bring your ex, too,” but when she walked out of the bathroom, saw that he was serious. She said, “I’ll finally get to spend a little time with him?”

  He nodded. “Maybe one day this week, in the evening, I’ll bring him over.”

  “Perfect.” She saw no trace of a joke on his face. “I could whip up something. What does he like to eat?”

  “That’d be nice, but not necessary. Some of those Oreo cookies and some ice cream would be cool.”

  “The cookies you’ve been scarfing and there’s only a quarter pack left?” She found a bottle of body spray from the night table drawer and spritzed her neck and her arms.

  He heard his cell phone chirping, looked around. “Now where’s that thing?” He lifted his jeans off a bench by the wall, patted the pockets.

  “It’s outside.”

  “Outside, what would it be doing outside?”

  “Hmm, let’s see. Because maybe you left it in the coin tray like you always do?”

  He snapped his fingers, walked off to get it and spun around fast. “You were checking out my ass, weren’t you?”

  “You know I was.”

  She sat Indian-style on the bed and flipped through a textbook on color management, hearing him on the phone, her mind wandering. She slapped the book shut, heaved it on the ground, and covered her face with her hands.

  What the hell was she doing?

  That man outside, the man who just rose naked from her bed, was he the slippery drug runner of the “ruthless organization” police had been trying for years to nail? That man outside? That silly, sweet gentle man? Riley James? Her Riley James?

  She sighed, she felt like such a heel. There was a golf ball in her throat, but she was not going to give in to emotion, no way. Not tonight … it had been so perfect.

  She lay on her side, curled around a pillow. He was not the man she thought she knew when the investigation started. Not a streak of meanness in him that she could see now. Like a father should be. Occasionally, she’d dropped hints, spoken well of him to Malone. “The best neighbor I’ve ever had. I’m not lying.” “What an easygoing guy.” “Why do some criminals turn out to be such nice people?”

  Malone said, “You sound like every single woman I know. ‘Why are all the handsome guys gay?’ ”

  Malone must’ve picked up on her warming up to Riley, or growing cool toward the operation. Picked up on her doubting her role. He showed her pictures, two men lying bloody on a dirt road near a pickup. He pointed to the one slumped against a tire. “This guy, Tarik El-Bani. This other guy, a local officer in El-Bani’s pocket. The agency had been following El-Bani’s movements for months back in the eighties, he was getting big. Do you know how these men died?”

  “Shot, it appears.”

  “Multiple times. You know by whom?”

  She hesitated. “I think I know.”

  “So do we. In fact, we’re pretty damn certain Mr. James was the gunman. Everything we know about the local investigation points to him, which is how he came on our radar. A young member of a loose organization run by a rival drug family takes out our target and makes himself a target. Candice, the bad guys never get away. The shadow they cast, it’s too long, they draw too much attention, clever as they think they are, they can’t hide forever. It’s simply in their nature to be deviant, and what does law enforcement need to do? Pay attention, be patient. Like going fishing.”

  She thought, Sure, whatever you say, John Wayne. But then, in the days that followed, she wondered if what he said next was true.

  “Sooner or later, people like Riley James, they all taste the hook.”

  * * *

  After he got off the phone, he brought a hefty chunk of cheesecake on a plate with two forks. They ate in bed, propped against the headboard, licking the forks clean and listening to the rain. “One mile more tomorrow morning,” she said, stabbing a piece. “Mmmm … Two more miles,” digging in again.

  He said, “Yeah, all one hundred and twenty pounds of you.”

  “One eighteen.”

  “Excuuuse me.”

  She teased him about his calloused toes, some of the ugliest she’d ever laid eyes upon. He wiggled them, cracking them to annoy her. He scraped off the cheesecake stuck to the plate and said, “I’ve got to meet somebody tonight. I shouldn’t be too long, okay?”

  That surprised her. “In this weather? Do you have to?”

  “It’s this man I do business with, he just called. He’s being unreasonable, and I think I better get this meeting over with so I don’t have to hear his complaints anymore. I’m sorry.”

  Why was she so upset? She wasn’t faking, there was something else.… She bounded off the bed and hurried into the bathroom, slamming the door.

  Riley called, “You all right?”

  She sat on the toilet, lowered her head. “I’ll be okay.… It’s the cheesecake, I think.” Her forehead was cold with sweat—she’d lost her flipping mind, hadn’t she. She felt a knot of indigestion high in her stomach, her breath was shallow, her arms suddenly clammy.

  To expect that she and this man were going to live some normal, stable life was ludicrous, a fantasy, a child’s game. For that to happen, she saw it plainly: She’d have to betray the DEA completely.

  How the hell did she take this long to admit that?

  Riley rapped on the door. “Want me to get you something? Tums?”

  “No—I’ll be fine.” She flushed the toilet. She ran cold water and stared at herself in the mirror. She leaned over, splash
ed water on her face, laved it over her neck and straightened, cool water sliding down her back. And the night had been so beautiful.…

  Or maybe that was all too superficial. Behind her giddy grins, the girlish glee, the other woman inside her skin, the adult, was screaming. She thought, You are so messed up, Candice.

  When she said yes to Riley, she’d narrowed her life to two choices, and the day was speeding her way like a tunnel train—with Riley dashing off somewhere in the middle of the night, which she knew was because of his shadow life—that moment was hurtling at her, when she’d have to decide: Let’s start a family, my love. Or turn coldhearted: So long, Riley, you should’ve known better.

  Riley said at the door, “Sure you don’t want anything? You’re going to be all right?”

  “I hope so, Riley,” she said, wiping her eyes dry. “I sure hope so.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Riley didn’t like the vagueness. Why did they have to meet now, an odd hour like this, on a rainy night? This matter can’t wait, Carlo said, that’s why. Could Carlo at least give him a hint what it was about, he was in the middle of something here. “Just come, Riley, we got two men who’ll help us I need you to meet. Can’t say any more at the moment.”

  So Riley borrowed Candice’s umbrella and returned home in the rain. His yard was soggy and thunder rumbled deep in the pitch blackness to the west. He strapped on tattered Chaco sandals, got his rain slicker off the peg behind the bathroom door, and what else…? Looking around, considering. The vagueness had put him on edge, the suddenness of the call.

  In his bedroom, he opened the closet and cleared shoes and boxes out of the way to reach the small safe in the back, bolted to the floor. He dialed in the combination, tugged open the door, surprised at how heavy it was. It had been several months since he’d opened it. Inside was his passport, assorted house and business documents, and right behind an emergency bundle of cash and a twenty-count box of Spear .45 ACP rounds, there it was, looking intimidating, the Kimber 1911 Brisbane had given him.

  Riley took it out, and in swift moves dropped out the magazine, cranked the slide, checked the empty chamber, like it was yesterday. He fondled the pistol, held it out straight and looked down the sights and thought, Naah.

  He reseated the mag and returned the gun to the safe and shut it, feeling wise about his decision.

  He drove his truck through empty streets, no radio on to distract him, just the pleasing swoosh of tires in the rain. He headed up the BelChina Bridge and realized there was a blackout on the other side of the river. It didn’t take much of a storm to knock the power out in some areas of the city.

  He rolled onward on Youth for the Future Drive. He liked that name, especially considering that a good bunch of the youth on this street were seeing to their future doing odd jobs for the Monsantos. He hung a right on Ebony Street and another right down a pothole-riddled lane with no name sign, headlights beaming for the river. He jounced along in the blackout and hard downpour on an unnamed lane to meet unknown men for some unclear reason. Men who could “help them.” Great, sounds fabulous, please, get him out of bed for this, count him in for sure.

  Riley punched the high beams on just in time to see where the lane dead-ended at the river. He stomped the brake, telling himself to cool it, check your attitude at the door. He parked behind a wreck of a car on cement blocks and made sure he locked all the doors. In areas like this, you paid for your carelessness.

  He flipped up the hood of his slicker and walked through puddles toward the boatyard at the river’s edge. He made his way along a trail of planks thrown on the ground, past the shadows of tugboats and skiffs under open sheds and a chained pit bull barking at him.

  In the back, behind a stack of lumber and boats on dry dock, was the watchman’s shack, where Carlo told him to go, but the plank windows were down and the door closed, the whole place in darkness. Listening to the dog and the rain pelting his slicker, Riley cursed, thought of going back to the truck for his flashlight, when a back door opened and a figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted by a wavering light from the room.

  “Hey, Riley? That you, Riley?”

  Riley said, “Hey,” and advanced, raising a hand.

  “The one and only, the mystical one,” Carlo said, escorting him into the house.

  The room was hot. Riley hauled off his slicker, dropped it by the door. Two men were sitting at a table jammed against a wall of the small room that passed for a kitchen. A kerosene lamp burned in the center of the table, the flame fluttering when Carlo swung the door shut. He pulled out a chair for Riley. Riley nodded at the men, sat down.

  Carlo said, “Riley, this is Temio and Chino. They came in from Mexico this evening.”

  Neither man offered a hand, faces expressionless.

  Tinny calypso was playing in the next room with walls that didn’t reach the ceiling. In the flickering light, Riley didn’t recognize either Mexican, one with a thick mustache and male-pattern baldness, the other lean and dark with straight black hair and Indian features. Riley didn’t know, because Carlo didn’t make clear, which one was Temio, which one Chino, probably not their real names anyway, but Riley had a feeling he was going to find out, whether he wanted to or not.

  Carlo fixed Riley with a stare. “What took you so long?”

  Riley figured he was trying to pull rank in front of the Mexicans so he let him have his show, Riley not taking it too seriously. “Like I told you on the phone, I was getting ready to have some cheesecake.”

  Carlo’s brow knotted. “What?”

  There was movement at the other side of the room and Riley turned to see Israel coming from behind a curtain in the doorway to the other room, toweling his pate dry. “Nasty weather,” he said. He removed his glasses, dabbed at his eyes, pushed the glasses on and took in the room.

  Carlo said, “Fucking cheesecake. He’s late because of cheesecake.”

  Israel shrugged. “Must’ve been some tasty cheesecake.”

  Carlo seemed to ponder that. He said to Riley, “What kind, one of them fancy ones like dulce de leche?”

  “Plain. With a little strawberry topping.”

  “Strawberry syrup running all down the side?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A fat slice, like with a couple beefy strawberries on top?”

  “Yeah, you know it.”

  Carlo nodded deeply. “Very nice.”

  Israel stepped forward and said, “Riley, you know why we called you here?” looking for a place to put the towel among the pots and pans and stacks of canned goods on the counter. He finally tossed it by the sink, by rotting backboards and a dish rack. He faced the room, holding on to the counter, no cane tonight.

  Riley said, “I have a feeling.”

  “Tell me.”

  Riley’s eyes passed over the two Mexicans. “Something to do with the shipment.”

  “Excuse me a second,” Israel holding up a hand and cocking an ear toward the other room. He raised his voice at the gap between the wall and ceiling. “Turn up the volume, please.”

  There were footsteps behind the wall, and the calypso music got louder.

  “Regarding that last shipment,” Israel said. “Our friend El Padrón is giving us some assistance. We located the shipment. Thanks to a little double-crossing bird named McCoy that flew in and sang a sweet song over the phone. He told us who has it, and now we’re getting it back. For a nominal fee to this McCoy.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  Riley said, coolly, “Okay,” but he was thinking, Tonight?

  “These two gentlemen are professionals in the retrieval arts. We don’t expect any difficulties, but they’re also highly skilled in techniques of persuasion. Your job is to take them where they need to go, in the shortest time possible, and return with the cargo intact.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes tonight,” Carlo said, walking into Riley’s line of vision. “You got a problem with that?”

 
Riley tried to look past him and address Israel, but Carlo wasn’t moving. Riley expelled a breath and relaxed. “Where we going?”

  “On the water,” Carlo said.

  “Where on the water?”

  Israel said, “Caye Caulker, Riley.”

  “Twenty-odd miles out on the sea, in this weather?”

  “The element of surprise,” Carlo said.

  It figured he’d come up with B-movie shit like that. Riley stood up and walked around him so he could reason with Israel. “Look, I understand how important it is to get this thing back ASAP, but you think maybe we could wait until tomorrow night? We’re talking serious waves out there tonight. If you can avoid it, you avoid it.”

  “It can’t wait,” Israel said. “We’ve set up the meeting for tonight. McCoy says he can’t guarantee things will be in the same spot more than twenty-four hours.”

  One of the Mexicans mumbled something.

  Carlo waved a finger and said, “No, vamos esta noche.” He shook his head at Riley. “Bullshit.”

  Israel said, “Riley, think of it this way. You do this tonight? Tomorrow you’re retired, enjoy all the fancy cheesecakes you want. But let’s get this job done. That’s only sound business sense. Weather? Weather is beyond our control. We’ve got to be practical businessmen regardless of the weather and bad roads and bellyaches and other such vagaries. Experienced man like you, you ought to understand this.”

  Something moved at the doorway curtain, and Riley saw a little face poking out. Carlo said, “Hey,” snapped his fingers, and the little girl pulled back.

  Riley smiled at that and thought, Let’s get this over with then. When he looked at Israel he didn’t need to say a word.

  Israel shuffled toward the table and spoke to the Mexicans. “¿Tiene sus cosas?”

  They nodded.

  Carlo turned to Riley. “The Ravish is out there. You need to gas up out at Robinson Caye. Other than that, the boat is stocked up and ready, flares, flashlights, everything.”